Jacqui O'Hanlon

Jacqui O'Hanlon is the RSC's Director of Education.

She's a theatre education practitioner and writer. She joined the RSC in 2003 and currently leads a team of 15 people in her role as Director of Education. She's responsible for the strategic direction and management of the Education Department.

In 2008 she led the RSC's national campaign, Stand up for Shakespeare, a manifesto for Shakespeare in schools. The manifesto's aim is to ensure that more children and young people have access to high quality experiences of Shakespeare and 15,000 supporting signatures were obtained during the year-long campaign.

She has striven to influence the development of policy and practice around the teaching and learning of Shakespeare and brought about a major development for the RSC through establishing the Learning and Performance Network, the RSC's long term schools partnership programme working with 400 primary and secondary schools across the country, reaching 96,000 children and young people.

Before working at the RSC, Jacqui was a freelance theatre practitioner and actor working in various theatres and arts organisations as well as primary and secondary schools across the country.

During her freelance career she established an annual young people's new writing festival in Kolkata and Mumbai for the British Council; was Education Director on several productions for the National Theatre and developed a programme of work which used drama to develop emotional literacy skills in children.

She is an Associate Fellow at the University of Warwick and has co-written a recently published book for teachers called Using Drama To Teach Personal, Social And Emotional Skills.

She also edited the RSC Shakespeare Toolkit for Teachers, published by A&C Black in January 2010. The Toolkit aims to bring the work of the RSC rehearsal room to life in primary and secondary school classrooms.